


Buddy System

by Kyla_Wren



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Zer0 shows up for one haiku and then bounces, fun in Promethean war zones, not as much fun in Hyperion factories, the eridium blight is my favorite place on pandora, vault hunters in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 07:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21115139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyla_Wren/pseuds/Kyla_Wren
Summary: Zane slips up and gets kidnapped. Amara has to put on shoes and come rescue him.





	Buddy System

“I’m tellin’ ye, ye’ve got the wrong Flynt brother,” Zane growled, twisting in his prison of nylon cord.

He felt monumentally stupid. Overrun and somehow outwitted by not just bandits, but the dumbest fuckwit pack of them he’d yet to encounter. They stood around gawking and poking him with stolen guns from his own kit. One of them was inspecting his disabled SNTNL drone in a way that made the operative very nervous. The only impressive thing about them so far was their knot-tying skills - he was held tight, swinging six inches above the floor like a spider’s dinner.

Overconfidence was to blame, as usual. When you got to Zane’s level, you had to be very careful not to relax. And  _ careful _ was one word nobody would use to describe the blonde vault hunter.

**Last Week, on Promethea:**

“A bar? You mean, besides the coffee bar?” Lorelei was having a hard time wrapping her head around the concept. She took a deep drink from her thermos of life-sustaining fluid. 

“Yes, lass, the kind with alcohol. Are there any left around here, or did they all go the way of the fro-yo?” Zane rolled his eyes. It had been a while since he’d last stayed on this planet. In the intervening years it had gone through two overhauls - the theme park-ification brought on by Atlas’ business boom, and the complete devastation wrought by Maliwan’s attempted hostile takeover. Gone were the days of six competing karaoke bars on one block.

The green-haired fighter scratched her temple, smearing some of her red warpaint. “You know, I think the ‘fugees in Lectra City have a bar.”

Zane snapped his fingers. “That’s what I like to hear. Amara? Fancy a drink?”

His fellow vault hunter, teammate, partner, and favorite person in the galaxy was rummaging through a Maliwan crate for loot. Her ponytail swayed as she held an ammo pack up to the light.

“We  _ could _ use a break.” The siren’s voice was rich and amused as ever. Zane felt like he always made a merry fool of himself in front of her. A small price to pay to keep the smile on her face.

“Aye, it’s been full-on for days now.”

He was understating the situation. Since dropping to the planet's surface they had barely stopped to breathe. They spent their nights sleeping in their clothes in the ratch-infested underground camps, always ready to get up and move at a moment’s notice. During the day they fought Maliwan and did whatever they could to help Rhys' forces. It was getting exhausting. Zane wanted a shower and he wanted a drink, and with current water shortages, the latter option was sounding more plausible.

The vault hunters took a pair of cyclone cars, planning on ditching them and fast-travelling back if they drank too much. Zane kept drifting in front of Amara to annoy her. 

“Are you trying to race?” she snapped good-naturedly over their echo connection. The roar of the engines made regular speech impossible.

“I dunno, if we are yer doin’ a piss poor job of it.” He serpentined in front, not letting her cyclone pass. Vehicle handling was one of the few areas he surpassed Amara in. Her talents were intensely physical, all magic and flesh and the snap of bones breaking. Zane worked in metal and sparks, and the blue shadow of code. Cars he knew. Siren witchcraft, not so much.

Amara beeped her horn and tried to angle around him. He cut her off with ease, barking a laugh. Their spinning cyclones wound back and forth in this dance all the way there, down miles of broken empty highway under a rose-stained sky and the vast Maliwan space yacht that hung above them.

Lectra City was more like the Promethea he remembered. Gritty, and bright, with an eternal hum in the air. This neighborhood had real character, even under the fresh rubble. A familiar name in lights was even there to greet them.

Moxxi had set up shop in the tiny pink neon bar on the corner of two alleys. The fact that it was in the center of a war zone hadn’t deterred her in the slightest. There was no way she was going to stay on a ship with an economy limited to a few hundred people when a whole city of thirsty customers waited on the surface below.

Amara was out of her car and tackling him before he even had the engine off. She knocked him off his feet, a human bullet of hard muscle.

“Asshole!” The word contained a world’s worth of affection. She pinned his arms above his head and sat on his chest, having more trouble restraining his laughter than anything else. Zane never resisted her. 

He looked up at her exasperated face, framed by tendrils of that lovely dark hair. Her eyeshadow was a few days old by now, and more closely resembled Lorelei's raccoon paint than the pristine makeup in her promo photos*. (*Example: one collectible full-color poster of "the Tiger" she had hanging in her wardrobe. The poster Zane had  _ definitely _ not taken a photo of and made his echo background.) His hand twitched, reflexive in his desire to touch her, but pinned fast in her grip. He settled for blowing her a kiss and brandishing a wolf's smile.

"A shameless display / on streets painted with new blood / you two are lucky."

Amara turned her head. Zane strained to move enough to see Zer0 behind them.

“Lucky to be alive?” the siren ventured. She stayed motionless. Zane was becoming aware of many more people milling around on the sidewalk, witnesses to his compromised position.

“Lucky in love.”

"You're just in time," Amara said, finally shifting. She pulled him up with one hand and an easy motion. "Zane is buying drinks."

"Excellent." The Atlas assassin’s voice was still sinister, but more cheerful now. They clenched a fist in free-drink anticipation.

Zane felt a sense of deja vu as he handed his credits over. “One for me and one for the lady, please and thank ye. Oh, and one for Zer0."

“Sure, sugar. And how is the lady?” Moxxi leaned over to flirt with Amara. Zane raised his eyebrows. Moxxi was making a game lately of ignoring him in favor of the siren. Not that he blamed her. 

"Have you seen Rhys' siege mustache?" Amara chuckled, pulling out her echo to show photographic evidence.

Zer0 and Zane chatted for a while, reminiscing about their days under the tutelage of the same master assassin. As schoolfellows they had floated the idea of starting a team operation, with a hypothetical third killer whose name began with "z". Zane had drawn a logo for them and Zer0 made a slogan: ZZZ - Sleep Your Enemies.

"Aye, it was somethin' like this, weren't it?" Zane could barely see the napkin he drew on, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. An awkward crossed knife and katana, rendered in uneven lines. Zer0 took the scrap to look at up close.

"XD" they displayed on their mask.

"Funny how we both became vault hunters, in the end."

"Is it the end?"

"I hope not, mate."

Zane left for the bathroom (just as horrible as he expected) and was stopped on his way back by a short fellow in a dirty coat and a pair of goggles. In any other place and time Zane might have just thrown him through a window for his trouble. Here he was more mellow, with his friends within eyesight and a few drinks in him. Also, no windows close at hand.

“You look like a man who appreciates fine technology,” the fellow hissed. Zane felt his confusion evaporate. Black market tech. This he was used to.

“Maybe so. Are ye sellin’?” 

“Just information.” 

Zane tilted his head. "Go on, then."

The salesman, who seemed more shrewd than nervous, switched on a rotating hologram of a floorplan. Small details told Zane it was a Hyperion assembly line.

"Hyperion fuel cell. Proprietary tech for internal operations. Want the location? Only ten credits."

The cost of a decent lunch? It seemed a fair price to Zane. Even if the info was bogus. He was feeling reckless anyhow, and buying a cheap treasure map was one of the more harmless energy outlets he could think of.

The data upload scrolled by his left eye as he walked back to the bar. Amara broke away from her conversation to wave and give him a slightly tipsy smile. Only Zane would recognize it for what it was. The siren could drink most people under the table without any indication of letting it affect her, Zane only noticed certain tells because he paid her so much attention. The operative himself was more of a “up on the roof stark naked, throwing grenades,  _ again _ ” kind of drunk.

As soon as he sat back down Amara came up behind him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and nuzzling into his hair.

"It's not the cleanest, at the moment," he muttered to her, trying to cover up his shiver.

"You're still pretty." She kissed the back of his neck. He had to put down his drink.

Zane didn't think about the map again for several days.

**One Week and One Bizarre Murder Gameshow Later, on Pandora:**

And so, when their schedule allowed, he set out by himself to the old Hyperion extraction factory in the Eridium Blight. Zane hadn’t bothered to ask any of the other vault hunters to come with him. He figured with no enemies to pummel and nothing of interest to see except broken machinery, this was a trip he'd have to make alone.

By his own admission he was chasing after a dodgy tip. Zane half-expected the cell to be looted already. Selling the same map over and over to anyone who would pay wasn't a bad business plan, after all. It was worth a look, all the same. The rare fuel cell would be great for his SNTNL drone, extending operating life by a full twenty-four hours. It would let him go out on even more remote excursions to the parts of Pandora without reliable electricity. 

The operative had brought one of his better rocket launchers and a selection of small arms, just in case wildlife had overrun the factory and gotten into the eridium. Luckily (so he thought), his surroundings were barren when he arrived. The drop site was cold and silent but for the wind.

The Blight's landscape held a tortured kind of beauty. Here Pandora’s wound bled freely, purple seeping up from the ground. Incisors of black rock reared up against the eerie opal sky, wisps of clouds threading low around the mountains. Everywhere Zane walked the alien mineral crunched underfoot. He felt a strange love for its ferocity, its colors, which made him pause. Of course.  _ Amara _ . Even the flow of the eridium ore glowing through the rocks followed the pattern of her tattoos. This was a place for sirens.

He had been here only once before. Eight years ago, Handsome Jack had met him under a looming portrait statue. He had given Zane a job to do, issuing instructions somewhere between the bragging and flirting and thinly-veiled threats, while the operative squinted upwards and wondered at the artist’s choice to depict the CEO  _ reading _ . That same statue was still there, left to the elements that chewed slowly away at its surface.

Zane found the factory right away, torn up and abandoned like everything else on Pandora. It made it easy for him to get in - he walked right over a collapsed wall. On the factory floor stood the extractor with the piece he needed. The fuel cell was deep inside a barrel-shaped cylinder under a hatch, just big enough to squeeze into. He got his legs inside before admitting that the launcher would have to come off his back. His jacket had to come off, too, and Zane had to give himself a pep talk about tight spaces and claustrophobia before switching his eyepatch to its close-range mechanical work setting and easing himself fully into the cylinder.

Turning the mini-map off, that had been where things had really taken a turn for the stupid. Zane’s present field of vision, as he hung from bandit ropes, was monocular and bloodied. His patch had been smashed and his working eye punched a few times. He thought ruefully of the heat-tracker he usually had to spot enemies in the corner of his enhanced vision, little red dots circling his location. If he hadn’t switched that setting to the magnifier one more appropriate for bending over his workbench at home on Sanctuary III -  _ instead of alone on the planet’s surface _ \- he would have seen these arseholes coming.

Instead, he had just pulled the fuel cell from its casing when the undesirable end of a gun tapped the back of his head. He only had time to twist and pull that bandit forward, cracking their skull, before another blocked the opening. It was getting positively crowded in this little cylinder. Zane had to wince when he recognized his own rocket launcher facing him at close range.

“That’s not yours, ye little bastard,” he growled.

“Hands up,” his assailant snapped. Civilized, for a bandit. Usually they shot first and then yelled something about eating you. Zane did a double-take.

“You’re that fella from the bar! What’s your problem with me, mate?”

The same tipster who had sold him the location of the fuel cell back on Promethea nodded, backing up just far enough to let Zane pull himself out. A crowd of bandit goons surrounded them, yelling and taunting in the familiar old chatter.

“Just because you don’t wear that stupid looking helmet anymore doesn’t mean you can hide from me, Flynt!”

“Helmet?” Zane raised his arms and moved with a measured pace, calculating how many of them he could kill with his bare hands. If this freaky fellow was busy talking, he wasn’t shooting. And if he was more interested in speaking his truth than administering a quick death, Zane could try his luck.

“You thought you could just disappear? Pandora hasn’t forgotten what you did when you were king of the Rippers!  _ The Bloodshots don’t forget! _ ”

“Ohhh.  _ Captain _ Flynt is the one yer after, then. Not this handsome devil.” Zane edged closer to the ring of, he supposed, Bloodshots. “And I’m sorry to disappoint, but he’s long dead.”

“Not yet - but he’s going to be!” Never mind about civil. Behind the goggles gleamed the eyes of a madman.

“Not that I blame ye for hating my big brother, but I am afraid he’s been gone some seven years now. Impressive grudge-keepin', mate. You really went for the long con, didn’t ye? You actually followed me off-world?”

His best bet was to ask questions and not wait for the answers. Zane sprang for the nearest bruiser-sized goon and managed to take down two of them before having his theory proved wrong. The Bloodshot with a grudge was a talker, but he was also a shooter. A firestorm from Zane’s own rocket launcher evaporated the operative’s shield and knocked him out cold.

**An hour ago, Sanctuary III:**

Amara tore open a packet of protein powder with her teeth and poured it into a glass. There were a lot of Pandorans in the vault hunters' suite today, playing with the quick-change machine and looking out the window at the planet below. She had to edge past a small crowd just to get to a water dispenser and stir up her drink. 

Moze and Fl4k were on a mission down in the Dust. Amara had the day off. She slept in late, did a quick workout, and then wandered out in search of lunch and company. In full home-body mode, she wore her Partali Classic boxing ring hoodie unzipped over a sports bra and men's shorts. Zane's shorts, to be honest. If he was going to occasionally leave laundry on her floor then she was going to occasionally keep it for herself.

Speaking of, where was Flynt? She moseyed over to his door and gave it a knock. No answer. She pressed the door release. Locked.  _ Huh _ .

Amara fished her echo device out of a deep pocket and wrote him a text.  _ Lunchtime?  _

Her echo showed a ping on his location as the message sent. Planetside.  _ Double huh _ .

"Having fun without me?" Amara scolded, smiling at her echo. If he was fighting something interesting she’d be really jealous later. 

She ate her whole lunch before wondering why he hadn't responded. When she checked his ping again it hadn't moved.  _ Well, that can't be good. _

Time to put on her boots and find out what was up on Pandora. Down on Pandora?  _ Whatever.  _ She suppressed a gentle twinge of worry. The operative was probably fine. Taking a nap, maybe.

She wasn’t too far off the mark.

**Now:**

When Zane woke up, he was wrapped in enough cord to reach Elpis and back.

“Felt wrong to be on the receiving end of that,” he muttered, moving his neck and feeling pain shoot down every nerve.

He took stock of his situation. It was worse than before being tied up, definitely worse. More Bloodshots had amassed, and the short guy from the bar was pacing back and forth in front of him. He started off on a long list of grievances against Zane's deceased brother, interspersed with torture plans he had devised to get revenge. After his initial protests were ignored, Zane wasn't really listening. He did interject an "oh, ah?" on occasion to keep the conversation flowing.

His guns were gone. His jacket was on the floor somewhere, with his echo and his hand blades in it. The knives in his boots were inaccessible with bound hands. There was a guard on either side of him, and about nineteen, maybe twenty bandits in the room. His eyepatch was broken, and there was some internal bleeding going on. Without the cybernetics to scan his health he wasn't sure which injuries were most life-threatening.

Zane started calculating angles. If he swung his body weight with enough force in one direction -  _ oh, here's Amara.  _

The siren bolted into the room, ramming straight into the bandit leader. That was her style. No picking off the edges with a sniper rifle first - no, that was a Zane habit. Amara always went right for the center of the action. 

She was thorough, too. Zane felt the same admiration well upon him as it had on their first mission together. Once she started punching, she had no remorse, no capacity to slow down. Zane had once seen her punch a  _ turret _ until it broke, absorbing fire all the while. She would fight until her opponent lay dead, then move on to the next. Often they would run away before their turn came. 

He noticed she seemed to be even more powerful than usual, more fast. Amara's siren powers overlapped her arms with blue shadows, pushing her forward and catching enemies. Her punches were quadrupled. Her movements verged on manic.  _ Must be all the eridium around. _

The Bloodshots didn't know how to react. They may have never seen a siren other than the Calypso twins on the echonet. Instead of fleeing for their lives, they stood around emptying their ammo clips into Amara's state-of-the-art shield. Zane knew from experience it would only serve to annoy her. For a moment he forgot about being in pain and just enjoyed the front row seat to her performance.

He finally shook himself and focused on trying his swinging plan. It was hard to build up any momentum, but with patience and many attempts he was finally able to push himself off the closest wall with his feet. He caught the only guard within range square on their back, making them stumble and fall forward into Amara's splash zone of corrosive acid. Considering it a job well done, he spent the remainder of the fight trying to slow down his inertia as he swung back and forth. The room went quiet before he was able to reduce his speed.

“How’s it hanging, blondie?” Amara purred, looking up at him with hands on her hips. She couldn’t resist the bad pun.

“I’ve been in worse positions,” Zane said, still swinging gently. He tried for a winning smile. She snorted and began cutting him down.

“Oh really? And how did you get out of those? Did your girlfriend come save you?”

“Nooo, I think she was too busy makin’ a name for herself in the Partali fight circuit.” Zane sighed with relief as his feet hit the floor. He leaned into Amara’s neck, breathing in her scent.

“I see.” The siren pulled the ropes off of him, letting them hit the floor. She brought his face close to hers and squinted in concern. “Your eye needs help. A mechanic or a doctor or... something.”

“Tannis’ll patch me up, and I can fix the tech m'self,” Zane waved her worry away, though he was feeling less than stellar. He closed the distance between them to steal a kiss. She was hot to the touch from using her powers, a slight tang of corrosive scent lingering in her hair and evaporating in the cold factory air.

Amara insisted on giving him a hypo and looking over his injuries before they left. Zane limped over to retrieve his jacket and the hard-won fuel cell while she followed him around, jabbing different parts of his body and asking if it hurt ("It all hurts, yer strong as hell. Ow!"). Only when the rope burns were fading and his cuts were closing did she travel them back to Sanctuary III, where a bed in Tannis’ lab was open and waiting. That, and a lecture from Lillith about the mandatory buddy system.

It was bizarre to find himself here, he thought, Lillith’s stern words making a pleasant background buzz. The Crimson Raiders' commander pointed outside the lab’s window to a waving Moze and Fl4k, illustrating her point about available backup. Tannis was wrapping his arm in gauze. Amara sat on the edge of the next bed, leaning on her knees, pretending to read a book and trying not to laugh. Even that horrible Cl4p-tp unit was handing him a card that said “Get Well Soon, Dumbass!” before Tannis chased it away.

Before he became a vault hunter, Zane had done every job alone. Worked alone, ate alone, slept alone. No exceptions. Now he couldn't go down to the bleedin' surface by himself for an hour without someone to watch his back. Part of him wanted to feel disgruntled by that, but he just couldn't lie to himself. Life on a team was great. Life with a partner was fantastic.

So when any other elite mercenary would be pitching a fit of wounded pride - Zane just smiled. He reached over to catch Amara's hand and tangle it up with his.

"Aye, aye. I won't go a-wandering again, Commander." 

"Good. That goes for everyone on this ship." Lillith nodded to herself and turned on her heel.

Zane glanced over at his siren partner with his good eye. She winked.

"By the way, are ye wearin' me clothes today?"

"Shh, the patient needs rest." Amara pressed her fingers over his lips. “Besides, they fit me perfectly.”

Zane closed his eyes. “I think it’s the first time I’ve seen ye off the ship not all kitted out.”

“Usually the branding is important,” Amara swept her free hand through the air as if writing her name on a marquee. “People have to recognize me. But this was an emergency.”

“And how did ye know that?”

“Okay, a potential emergency.”

“So yer tellin’ me ye rushed down planetside in borrowed clothes for a  _ potential _ situation.” Zane kept his eyes shut, his smile spreading.

“What is this, an interrogation? I care about you. A lot. Don’t rub it in, blondie."

He kept his mouth shut. Amara shooed him over a few inches and reclined on the lab cot with him. Her tattoos glowed softly against his own skin. For a moment he felt just as he had in the Blight, faced with ferocity and feeling only comfort. The sublime power of the vaults transformed into something familiar, something safe. Something he couldn’t live without.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I could just go on and on about how much I friggin' love Borderlands and how much I love Zane and Amara in particular. I think a really great thing about the gameplay is how you end up customizing your own story through the skill trees and character skins... or at least I do, in my brain. My first playthrough as Amara I gave her a corrosive elemental melee build, and that's what I had in mind while writing this fic. Love how they made her siren tattoos glow acid green when you chose corrosive. My co-op partner played through as Zane and I think the two characters make a perfect buddy cop dynamic - the powerful, self-assured siren and the roguish, cheerful operative. I can so easily see Zane following Amara around with hearts in his eyes.  
I hope you enjoyed this story!! If you leave a comment it really brightens up my whole day, no lie. Tell me what build you made for Amara and/or Zane, or even better, tell me what outfit skin you liked best.**
> 
> **mine was the all-black Creature of the Night skin - orange accents, orange-dipped ponytail, corrosive-green glowing siren tattoos, and a black Desperado cowboy hat to top it off. I call it the Sheriff of Old West Halloweentown look.


End file.
